Russia, separatists blast Ukraine's plans to request deployment of UN peacekeepers in Donbas


On Wednesday evening Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council supported President Poroshenko’s initiative to ask the United Nations to send peacekeeping mission to Ukraine. Russia and Russian-backed militants have already slammed the idea.

“The best format for us is the police mission of the EU. It will be the most efficient guarantor of security in the situation when the word of peace is not observed either by Russia or those who are supported by it,” Poroshenko said opening the session of the NSDC.

Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, is expected to approve the appeal to the UN today, which will give the opportunity to record and localise violations of the ceasefire, Oleksandr Turchynov, the NSDC secretary, said. According to him, Peacekeepers should be deployed along the front line and rebel-controlled border sections with Russia.

In their turn, Russia and the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic consider the possible deployment of peacekeepers an attempt to violate the Minsk agreements.

“If some other schemes are proposed, it raises the question of whether the Minsk agreements are going to be adhered to or not,” Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s envoy to the UN, said.

According to him, it is crucial that weapons should be withdrawn. No new initiatives are needed, he added.

Denis Pushilin, a representative of the so called DPR, called Ukraine’s appeal deployment of peacekeepers ‘a breach of the package of February, 12 measures obliging Ukraine to negotiate border issues with self-defense forces’.

It should be noted that pro-Russian forces have repeatedly violated the recent Minsk agreement themselves. For example, militants refused to stop fighting for the town of Debaltseve, a strategically important transportation hub, claiming it is their ‘internal territory’ and saying they have no ‘moral right’ to leave it.

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